Georgian troops remain in an area close to the Russian border in the Kakheti region where, according to the officials, three servicemen and 11 suspected militants died in an armed clash on August 29.

The last time when the Interior Ministry provided update about the ongoing operation was late afternoon on Wednesday when it said that six remaining gunmen were “surrounded” by the Georgian troops.

Secretary of Georgian National Security Council, Giga Bokeria, said late on Wednesday that the remaining group of gunmen was “localized”.

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Three Georgian troops died and five were wounded in a clash with “a squad of saboteurs” during an operation in the Kakheti region, close to the Dagestan section of the Georgian-Russian border, the Georgian Interior Ministry said in a statement released shortly before 4pm local time on Wednesday.

Two of the killed Georgian troops were from the Interior Ministry’s special purpose unit and one was an army corporal, who served as a doctor with the Defense Ministry’s special operations forces

“11 members of the armed group have been liquidated,” it said.

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Turkish troops have killed 16 Kurdish fighters during an operation in southeastern Turkey in response to a bomb attack on a military convoy that killed five soldiers, according to the local governor’s office.

The clashes, which occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, are part of a growing cycle of violence in the remote, mountainous province of Hakkari bordering Iraq and Iran - a development which Turkish officials and analysts are linking to the deepening conflict in Syria.

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Four Turkish soldiers were killed and two wounded on Wednesday by remote-controlled bombs targeting their convoy, security sources said, the latest sign of escalating violence in the Kurdish region.

The deaths follows a car bombing on Monday that killed nine people, including children, and wounded more than 60 others in the southern town of Gaziantep.

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Heightened security measures have been put in place for the funerals of some of the seven policemen who were killed in a suicide bomb blast in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, police said on Monday.

The explosion occurred at the funeral of a fellow police officer on Sunday.

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